Are You a Chronic Dieter?

When a new client comes to me and tells me they've been consistently dieting or trying to diet for the last few years, the first thing I do is actually have them INCREASE their calories. Why?

You cannot diet forever.

Clearly, if what you've done in the past is not working, you need to try a different approach. Right? Here are the two common themes I see with chronic dieters:

1. You're under eating during the week which is causing you to overeat on the weekends, pulling you out of a deficit

2. You've been eating so little for so long, any time you "aren't dieting" the scale creeps up immediately, causing you to cut calories even more and now you feel like you're eating next to nothing, still hungry, and still not losing weight.

Our bodies are smart. When they are put under stress they will try to fight that stress to minimize damage. In terms of cutting: this means our bodies will try and use less calories to exist, so it can have more energy for other things. Aka "slow your metabolism." This is NOT a permanent thing. The trick to fixing this is to eat more, eat consistently, and stop trying to do everything all at once.

Now you ask: "how do I increase calories and not gain weight on top of the weight I already have to lose?" Here are several of the factors you can focus on instead of cutting calories:

1. More movement. I don't mean going out a running a marathon every day. Eating more calories consistently will likely lead to more energy. Use that to walk, get more steps in, play with your kids, be more active around the house, etc.

2. Focus on strength training: the more muscle mass you have, the more calories your body burns at rest, so when you do go to cut again, you don't have to completely starve yourself to see results

3. Focus on food quality: fill your meals with good protein options and at least one fruit or vegetable per meal. The better the quality, the better you'll feel overall.

Below is an example of one of my clients who was TERRIFIED to increase her food. She really wanted to lose weight to look, feel, and perform better in the gym. She was training at least 5 days per week and twice per day some days and wanting to stay between 1800-1900 calories. I told her either training had to massively decrease or calories had to increase. She decided to trust the process and we increased calories to 2100+ per day. Her body composition changes over the last year have been insane and I couldn't be more excited about her progress!